Hulu Hires Sony Network Entertainment’s Tian Lim as CTO

Hulu has hired Tian Lim, formerly with Sony Entertainment Network, as chief technology officer — giving the Internet TV joint venture a permanent CTO after about a year without one.

Lim’s appointment is the latest high-level recruit for Hulu chief Mike Hopkins, the former head of distribution for Fox Networks. One of Hopkins’ first orders of business has been to rebuild the senior management team, which was decimated last year amid the uncertainty over the fate of the company. Hulu’s owners — Disney, 21st Century Fox and NBCUniversal — solicited bids for Hulu before deciding to retain it last summer.

“We have sought out that needle-in-a-haystack who is a leading example of a builder and innovator,” Hopkins wrote in a blog post announcing Lim’s hiring.

Lim, who will officially start at Hulu on March 3, takes over for Brad Suter, who oversaw Hulu’s technology team on an interim basis. Suter will now report directly to Lim.

Hulu’s most recent CTO was Richard Tom, who left the company in March 2013 to join The Fremont Project, a digital media startup formed by Jason Kilar, Hulu’s founding CEO. JP Colaco, previously Hulu’s head of ad sales and operations, left last fall to join the Fremont Project.

Lim most recently was senior VP of product engineering at Sony Network Entertainment Intl., where he oversaw all North American engineering and service operations. His team was responsible for leading client and service engineering for the PlayStation Store on the web, PlayStation 3 and PS4, as well as many of the network features of the PS4. Before SNE, Lim spent eight years in Microsoft’s Xbox group; in his last position at Microsoft, he led all development for the Xbox Live service, Xbox 360 operating system and Kinect.